第16章

It was this sudden lapsing of all restraint that made the waves of gossip surge like sweeping billows.

And the flotsam that appeared most frequently of late on their crests, and that was tossed most relentlessly hither and thither, was Rachel Bond's and Harry Glen's conduct and relations to each other.

The Consolidated Lint-scraping and Bandage-making Union was holding a regular session, and gossip was at spring-tide.

"It is certainly queer," said Mrs.Tufis, one of her regulation smiles illuminating her very artificial countenance; "it is singular to the last degree that we don't have Miss Rachel Bond among us.

She is such a LOVELY girl.I am very, very fond of her, and her heart is thoroughly in unison with our objects.It would seem impossible for her to keep away."All this with the acrid sub-flavor of irony and insincerity with which an insincere woman can not help tainting even her most sincere words.

"Yes," said Mrs.Tabitha Grimes, with a premeditated acerbity apparent even in the threading of her needle, into the eye of which she thrust the thread as if piercing the flesh of an enemy with a barb; "yes;" she pulled the thread through with a motion as if she enjoyed its rasping against the steel."Rachel Bond started into this work quite as brash as Harry Glen started into the war.Her enthusiasm died out about as quickly as his courage, when it came to the actual business, and she found there was nobody to admire her industry, or the way she got herself up, except a parcel of married women."The milk of human kindness had begun to curdle in Mrs.Grimes's bosom, at an early and now rather remote age.Years of unavailing struggle to convince Mr.Jason Grimes that more of his valuable time should be devoted to providing for the wants of his family, and less to leading the discussion on the condition of the country in the free parliament that met around the stove in the corner grocery, had carried forward this lacteal fermentation until it had converted the milky fluid into a vinegarish whey.

"Well, why not?" asked Elmira Spelter, the main grief of whose life was time's cruel inflexibility in scoring upon her face unconcealable tallies of every one of his yearly flights over her head, "why shouldn't she enjoy these golden days? Youth is passing, to her and to all of us, like an arrow from the bow.It'd be absurd for her to waste her time in this stuffy old place, when there are so many more attractive ones.It ought to be enough that those of us who have only a few remnants of beauty left, should devote them to this work.""Well," snapped Mrs.Grimes, "your donation of good looks to the cause--even if you give all you got--will be quite modest, something on the widow's mite order.You might easily obey the scriptural injunction, and give them with your right hand without your left knowing what was being done."Elmira winced under this spiteful bludgeoning, but she rallied and came back at her antagonist.

"Well, my dear," she said quietly, "the thought often occurs to me, that one great reason why we both have been able to keep in the straight and narrow path, is the entire lack of that beauty which so often proves a snare to the feet of even the best-intentioned women."It was Mrs.Grimes's turn to wince.

"A hit! a palpable hit!" laughed pretty Anna Bayne, who studied and quoted Shakespeare.

"The mention of snares reminds me," said Mrs.Grimes, "that I, at least, did not have to spread any to catch a husband.""No," returned Elmira, with irritating composure, "the poorer kinds of game are caught without taking that trouble.""Well"--Mrs.Grimes's temper was rising so rapidly that she was losing her usual skill in this verbal fence--"Jason Grimes, no doubt, has his faults, as all men have; but he is certainly better than no husband at all.""That's the way for you to think," said Elmira, composedly, disregarding the thrust at her own celibacy."It's very nice in you to take so cheerful a view of it.SOMEBODY had to marry him, doubtless, and it's real gratifying to see one accepting the visitations of Providence in so commendable a spirit."To use the language of diplomacy, the relations between these ladies had now become so strained that a rupture seemed unavoidable.